Marcie Edwards, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power chief, outlines goals

Marcie Edwards, the new general manager of the Department of Water and Power meets with Daily News editorial board to discuss her plans for the utility Wednesday, April 2, 2014. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht/Los Angeles Daily News)

Marcie Edwards, the new general manager of the Department of Water and Power meets with Daily News editorial board to discuss her plans for the utility Wednesday, April 2, 2014. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht/Los Angeles Daily News)

Confronted with controversies over its new billing system and an ongoing dispute over two trusts it funds, the new general manager of the Department of Water and Power said Wednesday her main task is to re-establish customer confidence in the utility.

Marcie Edwards, in a meeting with the editorial board of the Los Angeles News Group, said much of her work in her first month on the job has been focused on two areas: getting the phones answered in a timely fashion and sending accurate bills to its customers.

To do so, she said, will require battling an entrenched bureaucracy at the DWP and at City Hall to allow her to hire the people needed to perform the work.

“I think we are at a point where we are close to where we need to be,” Edwards said, adding she is in the process of hiring more meter readers and customer service representatives to answer the phones.

“What people tell me they are concerned about is getting the correct bills and getting their calls answered.”

The new computerized billing system has proven especially difficult from its rollout to its current stage, which has seen a drop in estimated bills. Early on, she guessed that upwards of 20 percent of the bills the utility issued were estimated. She said that is now down to about 7 percent and she hopes to see it at 4 percent soon.

Edwards blamed the initial problems with the agency being unprepared for all the technical problems related to such a massive turnover.

“I don’t know of one major turnover to a new (computer) system that didn’t have problems,” she said. The agency had used the same billing system for 30 years while most companies upgrade their systems more regularly.

On the trust funds, Edwards said she was not in a position to discuss the problems with the Joint Safety and Joint Training Institutes and the refusal of IBEW, Local 18, Business Manager Brian D’Arcy to agree to an audit by Controller Ron Galperin.

Edwards, unlike her predecessors, is not a trustee of the two organizations. Mayor Eric Garcetti appointed his legal adviser, Richard Llewellyn, to that role.

But Edwards said the agency’s top executives who serve as trustees have told her they are comfortable with an audit.

“If it was strictly up to me, I would have a full audit right now by anyone,” Edwards said, adding she understood the need for the work to examine ways to improve training and safety of workers.

Her longer range goals are to change the culture of the DWP, which has become bogged down in years of regulations and customs that do not fit in with a modern utility.

Advertisement

“Any big bureaucracy favors form over function,” Edwards said. “We need to get to the point where we can experiment and make mistakes.”

At the same time, she said, the utility cannot lose sight of its primary purpose in providing reliable and clean water and power at the lowest possible rates.

Edwards said one of her other goals is to try to offer bills with clearer explanations of the costs involved.

The DWP’s rates are among the lowest in the region, she said, but become confused because the bimonthly bills also include sanitation and sewer charges.